With my experience, based on 45 years of hands-on, direct experience in the tea industry, I wish to issue a dire warning about the Sri Lankan tea industry; if inorganic fertilizer is withdrawn, the productivity of Sri Lanka’s tea lands will certainly decline to uneconomic levels. This will lead to a severe drop in foreign exchange earnings, resulting in a drastic decline in the earning capacity of all owners of tea lands – including tea smallholders which account for the majority of production and employment. Less tea at the weekly auctions would provide ample opportunity for our competitors to capture the traditional tea markets, which Sri Lanka currently holds.
What follows is an explanation of the science to back this claim – which is certainly more than what has been offered in defense of organic fertilizer…
